GTS has this thing where you can change which posts are accessible via the web (outside of an ActivityPub context, I mean).

D. Olifant

Like, for example, on your profile, but it's more than that. It's also whether someone can copy the link to your post, paste it into a new window, and be able to access it at all.

By default, GTS only exposes Public posts to the web. Not Unlisted ones.

In the last update, it was changed so that you could have it work like the Mastodon default (of Public + Unlisted) being visible on your profile, and also via the web. Additionally, 'None' was added as an option, which would mean NONE of your posts become accessible to the web, only via ActivityPub. And this profile is a great example of that now that I've put the shields up. You can view all my posts within ActivityPub, even on my profile, see my pinned items.

But you can't see any of them on my web profile. That's because

What this means in practice is that from one minute to the next I can toggle that setting from None to Public to Public+Unlisted and back again, and the accessibility of all my posts from this instance changes in realtime. Not just what's shown on my profile, but also what's accessible from the web.

By contrast, Mastodon forces you to have an RSS feed, forces you to have Public and Unlisted posts be accessible via the web and within your RSS feed, there's no way to change that, not in any fork except Hometown (which only lets you disable the RSS feed).

And so, consequently, you'll run into a few tech libertarian sorts who say things like, "Well, duh, you posted it publicly, on the web. Anyone can scrape that right off your profile, it's in an RSS feed, too, you can't expect privacy."

And sure, no one can expect perfect privacy posting anything online (except perhaps with an island network) but I don't exactly want just any standard web scraper to be able to access my posts, and someone I've blocked shouldn't just be able to access my posts by hitting an RSS feed or my profile to browse into conversations from which they are otherwise blocked.

Normally on Mastodon it's like, "Oh, I'm blocked." And then if someone is really pissed off and wants to see what you are saying about them behind a block, they visit your original instance, and they hit your profile, and they find the post thread you just blocked them from, and read it to try to see what you are saying about them.

And that's just how it works on Mastodon.

But on my profile? On this instance? It's not even an option. You engage with this account with ActivityPub, or you can't really access it via the web at all (at least for now, I could change my mind tomorrow).

What I find so interesting is how it fundamentally changes conversations about the expectation of privacy.

If all you know is Mastodon, you just assume all posts in the fedi are public, web-accessible, by default. That everyone has an RSS feed, that we're all broadcasting in the public, and Google and the NSA and anyone else who wants to scrape our very, very public posts can just do that without asking our permission, we won't even really know they are doing it, because "it's public, you ninny!" they might say.

But what would have happened if everyone had started out on GoToSocial? Well then the norms are different.

If GTS had been the norm, we'd just assume everyone in the fediverse opts-in to exposing an RSS feed. We'd assume that people can't just web-scrape one's Unlisted posts, and that in fact we should never assume that any of someone's posts are web accessible: Public, Unlisted, or otherwise. We'd assume everyone has access to reply control/interaction policies, too, and what a world that would be.

Without access to these things, however, raised on Mastodon, you're the person in the cave relating to the world like shadow puppets on the wall: you don't know what you're missing or what you could be expecting. The tendency to then loudly proclaim This Is How It Naturally Is with regards to privacy seems to overtake you, based on previous discussions about this topic, when you've never been exposed to a different normality.

Mastodon effectively dominates the Overton window re: the fediverse in this regard.... people assume everything works like Mastodon, but that's not really true. Use Misskey or one of its forks sometimes....you'll feel like you're on an entirely different planet, and I don't mean that in a bad way.

But using GTS fosters that same feeling of surrealism, with regards to data privacy and respect for user consent.

And now that I've acclimated to it, I much prefer that being my own "new normal."